Like so many others, I was enthralled by the ridiculously over-the-top trailer for this game. I’ve never played any of the Forza games before and sure it uses arcade physics but I can put up with that in exchange for an awesome presentation and hundreds of real world cars, right? Unfortunately no. The physics are so unrealistic that I quickly gave up on using a driving wheel and switched back to using a controller since that is clearly what the game was designed for. I also found the story missions to be asinine and nauseating. The racing events were enjoyable enough once I adapted to the simplified physics and avoided the fastest classes of cars but this was a game that never stopped irritating me.
The story, inasmuch as one exists here, is that the organizers of the Horizon Festival event have turned the entirety of Mexico into a gigantic car racing playground. The player is one of the racing superstars invited to participate in a wide variety of events. As you win races, perform feats or do just about anything even, you establish hubs that unlock even more events to do. Meanwhile scientists want your help to do research, local street racers want to challenge you, PR folk want you to do stunts and much, much more. There’s no shortage of things to do, including multiplayer activities, and yet there is nothing really that is required to do either. The endgame so to speak seems to be entering the Hall of Fame but that just requires earning enough XP and how you do so is up to you. Through it out, you earn money that you can spend on cars or in-game housing, win cars from participating in events and from the wheel spinning gambling game.
This is the first game since getting my new PC that properly puts it through its paces. It looks amazing and I’m happy with how silkily smooth it runs even when driving cars that go at ludicrous, near uncontrollable speeds. The map of a fictionalized Mexico is huge and features an impressive diversity of environments with deserts, beaches, freeways, mountain roads, jungles, picturesque towns, arena areas and much more. Combined with the weather system that allows for light drizzles, heavy rainstorms and dust storms, it’s a beautiful game in every respect. Sure, it’s cheesy to be able to drive around Mayan temples and the like but they’re just one part of a huge world so I guess that’s fine. The music is great too as the DJs frequently comment on whatever activity it is you just did. I’m old and out of touch with current music so this works as a way for me to know what’s popular at the moment.
For me though the unrealistic physics and gameplay design really kill my interest. Attempting to play it with a driving wheel feels terrible and the game actively penalizes it. You’re much better off with a controller as it’s so much easier to flick your thumb to correct your car. The AI also blatantly cheats by being able to make turns at speeds that should be impossible. Very often, you slow down for a corner and the AI speeds past you yet is able to corner cleanly anyway. The physics only lightly penalizes collisions so stopping by hitting a wall is a legitimate way of turning. I threw up my hands when I realized that in the point to point races you just need to drive straight towards the finish line crashing through all of the trees and obstacles in the way. The world may look beautiful but treating it this way makes it feel like a meaningless virtual environment with no weight to it at all. And if you actually hit the something or mess up while trying to pull off something crazy? The very generous rewind system lets you redo it, as many times as you need to. I just stopped taking the game seriously, limited myself to the A and S1 classes where the speeds are low enough that the AI cheating isn’t so obvious and went on from there.
It would be silly to attempt to complete everything in this game especially since there are new things to do every season. Still, I thought that I might complete at least the story missions. It turned out though that not only are there still too many of them but the writing for them is so asinine they might be the worst part of the game. It’s only to be expected that the main character be bland and featureless, but did they really have to include such silliness like pretending to collect scientific data by driving your car into objects, or using cars to represent Mexican wrestling, or pretending to discover long lost artifacts? So much dumbness. One good series of missions is the one that basically serves as an advertisement for Volkswagen. It might be an ad but at least it provides plenty of information about the company’s history in Mexico.
I was willing to give this the benefit of the doubt because of how much I loved The Crew, a somewhat similar game. Either I now have a better appreciation of what good driving physics actually mean or I have a lower tolerance for bullshit because I do not like Forza Horizon 5 at all. The actual racing events are fine enough and I admit that I can see the appeal in collecting cars and modifying the heck out of them. But too much of this game strikes me as juvenile and shallow. The annoyingly upbeat dialogue, the constant hyping up of both Mexico and racing culture, how insubstantial the world feels, how unsatisfying it feels to use a driving wheel on and more contributed to making this a disappointing experience for me and didn’t scratch the diving game itch at all. I guess I’d better stay away from the entire Forza franchise from here on out.
